March 20, 2017

Susan's Sociables

When I first wrote about the quadrille figure called the Sociable almost seven years ago, I noted that some sources offered slightly different sets of figures, and at least two suggested that the choice of figures was up to the caller:

"No positive rule as to what figure shall be called in the Quadrille Sociable. The choice is left entirely to the prompter." (Brookes, L. De G. Brookes on Modern Dancing. New York, 1867)

"Prompters often call figures in the 'Sociable' to suit their fancy, introducing the 'Star Figure,' 'Grand Chain,' etc." (De Garmo, William. The Dance of Society. New York, 1875)

I rarely exercise the option to call variant figures; my habit has been to do the most common four-figure sequence twice over, once for the ladies to progress and once for the gentlemen, with an eight-bar "All chassez" and honors coda at the end. Including introductory honors, this calls for a structure of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b. Working with live musicians, I can have music played to fit this pattern exactly. Or, if I am using the Sociable as the final figure of a quadrille, the short version with the progressive figures done only once (ladies progressing) is plenty, and since 8b + 32bx4 + 8b is a common finale structure, if necessary, it is easy to find a recording with that pattern.

But recently, I've been faced with the dual problems of calling the Sociable as a freestanding figure, meaning I prefer to call a longer figure to balance the time spent forming sets, and using recorded music, which is rarely to be found in the simplest long-Sociable pattern of 8b + 32bx8 + 8b. This means either spending time editing a recording to fit the dance or changing my calling to fit the recording. Editing music is a pain, so, since I have the option, historically speaking, of changing the figures, that is the approach I prefer.

The music most easily available recordings tend to be country (contra) dance tunes or medleys of thirty-two bars played six to nine times through. I also have quite a few extended recordings of earlier (Regency-era) English country dance tunes played twelve times through (mostly provided by dance band Green Ginger). While some of those tunes, such as College Hornpipe, are classics that crossed the Atlantic and continued in popularity for decades, 32bx12 is on the long side even for a single figure, and all the more so if the Sociable is being called as a substitute final figure for a plain quadrille.

I am not going to repeat my full description of the figures of the Sociable, which may be found at my earlier post here, but for callers who are not confident setting their own figures, I will give some easy options for calling to recordings of lengths of thirty-two bars played six, seven, or nine times through.

Six times throughThe 32bx6 length is on the short side for the Sociable danced as a single figure; you may be spending as much time setting up the sets as you are dancing. But if for whatever reasons one must use a recording of that length, I would suggest doing the figures only once through, with the ladies progressing, and adding three interspersed figures inspired by the suggestion of Judson Sause (The Art of Dancing, Fifth Edition. Chicago, 1889) to use "hands all round" as a figure. Adding an an actual fifth figure progressive figure creates the problem of leaving the ladies progressed an additional place rather than with their partner, but one can use a similar sort of "grand round" figure used in other quadrilles as a break between the progressive figures. One needs to add 16bx3 to get to a full 32bx6, so I would intersperse some grand round figures into the Sociable as follows (added figures in boldface):

8b Introduction (honors)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left32b First figure (right and left)32b Second figure (ladies' chain)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left32b Third figure (forward and back, circle left)32b Fourth figure (hands across)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left8b Face partners, all chassez, and honors to partners

"All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left" is, I think, self-explanatory, other than to note that I would have the dancers walk rather than galop. All the other figures are discussed in my earlier post.

Seven times throughDepending on the skill of the dancers, one could replace the grand round figure with a different sixteen-bar figure for all, such as a grand chain, or even alternate figures on each repetition. That would be my approach for a recording length of 32bx7:

8b Introduction (honors)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left32b First figure (right and left)16b All eight grand chain32b Second figure (ladies' chain)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left32b Third figure (forward and back, circle left)16b All eight grand chain32b Fourth figure (hands across)16b All eight forward and back twice and hands round to the left8b Face partners, all chassez, and honors to partners

For this version, one had better have dancers who either have a good memory or are practiced at listening to a caller, since it will be easy for them to lose track of when to do the grand round and when the grand chain. An easier version would be to do just choose either the grand round or the grand chain to do after each of the normal Sociable figures, rather than alternating.

Eight times throughA recording length of 32bx8 is just irritating; it's enough for the figures but not enough for honors or a coda figure. If I was unable or unwilling to edit the music to add at least 8b for honors, I'd simply skip honors and coda and do the usual four figures twice through with the ladies progressing the first four times and the gentlemen the second. Fortunately, this is an uncommon length for dance recordings.

Nine times throughBy comparison, fitting the dance to a recording structure of 32bx9 is quite simple: just do the standard four figures twice through with honors and coda, adding a sixteen-bar figure (a grand round of some sort or a grand chain would be the obvious ones) to fill out the music. This is the version I actually ended up calling at a recent ball, using the "Liberty" medley from the Grandview Victorian Orchestra CD. I placed a grand chain in the middle of the dance to provide an obvious break between the ladies' progression and the gentlemen's.

Experienced callers and figure-setters will of course be able to come up with other pleasing options for these lengths of recordings or to use with live musicians. It's historically appropriate, so have fun with it. But I will offer two cautions:

(1) One must keep the progressive structure in mind: there needs to be four, and no more than four, progressive figures to get the dancers back to their original partners. Eight if using two progressions. Once can add filler in between, but not extra progressive figures unless in multiples of four.

(2) Filler figures should be very distinct from the progressive ones. A sixteen-bar filler figure that follows the "heads something, sides something" pattern is potentially confusing; the dancers will expect the standard chorus-figure-with-progression afterward. A strong caller and attentive dancers can overcome this, but it makes things more difficult than necessary. Figures involving all dancers are obvious breaks in the pattern.